hms iron duke

Tuesday, 29 April 2014

Podella Pisanella. 29 April.
Niccolo Machiavelli once said, “Men are so simple and so inclined to obey
immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his
deceptions”.The Tuscan landscape flows
smoothly across the eye like a good bottle of Brunello di Montalcino flows
smoothly across the palette.In the
grand distance Cypressi stand erect across the hills and ridges like Roman
legionnaires celebrating the status – real or imagined - of the masters who
planted them.This is a refined,
man-made landscape born of ages with just the merest glimpse of the ancient
Etruscan wildness and medieval mayhem which once did so much to shape this land
and its people.Tuscany in some ways is
a metaphor for Europe. Right through its ancient heart run the highways and
bye-ways of an empire that still effectively shapes Europe – the Roman Empire.What does Tuscany’s history say of Europe
today?

Rome grappled
continually with the battle between elite power, the rights of citizenship,
discrimination, immigration, insecurity and supranational identity.Even today the shadow of Rome does so much in
the mind to separate the European from the non-European, the ‘them’ from the
‘us’.It is a tussle that still marks Europe’s
many dividing lines and which is daily played out as the EU and its leaders try
to turn distinct nations into European empire…again.

For many years now the
battle for a European ‘us’ has been fought between politicised Eurocrats and
their political fellow-travellers and national democrats dismayed at the
assault on their states by the very institution they thought served them.The EU has become one of those giant
computers beloved of Hollywood which is built to serve but learns to dominate.Sadly, what started out as a wonderful,
war-ending idea has become a nightmare as the ‘Europe’ the elite built simply
created a new ‘them’ and ‘us’ between the anonymously powerful and secret and
the anonymously and yet massed impotent – the people.

In May almost-elections
will take place to the almost European Parliament to elect the mainly unknown
at great expense to ‘represent’ the all-too-wittingly unknowing.Thereafter, the power-justifying, mandate
illegitimate European Parliament will be cited by the powerful as a false
mandate to build their false ‘Europe’ on false democracy.Sadly, the EU today is just about as far one
can get in democracy from government by the people, for the people and of the
people.

Machiavelli knew that If
politics outstrips identity then power becomes autocracy.And yet so many in the Brussels elite seem to
think that by chipping away at the power of the state function can somehow build
identity.The saddest thing of all for
the people is that so many European states are willing to go along with this.Many eastern Europeans after years of
subjugation by the Soviet Russians see EU membership as a badge of honour and a
source of protection (of sorts) even if it is not quite democratic. Southern
European states mired in debt see a loss of democracy and possibly liberty as a
price worth paying for access to the money of the few European taxpayers
actually paying hard cash to keep the Eurozone afloat.The French and other members of the original ‘Six’
still somehow think the EU of today is the European Economic Community of old and
that somehow they still have the beast under control.The Germans think that because they control
the European Central Bank in Frankfurt they control the EU and that somehow the
Union is the answer to the century-plus old German Question; European
integration on German terms.

Only the British perhaps
with their distinct traditions of law and freedom hewn out over centuries of
revolution-free history see the EU for what it is – power for a few at the
expense of the many. And yet the British elite have become so entangled in
their own spin that they have abandoned the fundamental principles of power and
influence.No-one listens to them
anymore – either within or without.

Just up the road from
here in Florence Machiavelli understood power and the arts of its dangerous
practice. He would have recognised today’s European nation-states as not
dissimilar to the Fifteenth century Italic League that he helped craft and
which was eventually crushed by the 1494 French invasion.The League was too late for Italy’s warring
city states had already been stripped of real power. Today’s EU state has been
similarly hollowed out by transferring so much of the essence of state power to
Brussels that no-one knows where the EU starts and the state ends.It is a recipe for strategic disaster.

And in steps Vlad.
Moscow is re-drawing Europe’s margins in that direct and brutal way in which
Russia has so often told its own story.Ironically,
given the case made by those for deeper European integration Russia’s aggression
has revealed just how weak Europe has become because of it. In any case, Comrade Vlad thinks the EU is
hypocritical.The EU’s exercise of power
is little different to that of the Kremlin - utterly secretive and lacking in
transparency with few if any real checks and balances.

Machiavelli was at his
Florentine peak during the 1494 French invasion.The Master would have understood all too well
the Europe of today.For him there would
likely be only two winners – the false democrats of Brussels spinning their
paralysing webs of ‘harmonisation’ and ‘efficiency’ and the non-democrats of
Moscow driving their tanks of autocracy through sovereignty.

The only question Machiavelli
would have asked is to which of the two to serve.After all, both Brussels and Moscow are brim full
of plotting little princes with whom the Master would have felt entirely
comfortable.My bet is on Brussels for Machiavelli
would have understood that with power moving inexorably away from the state it
is the little princes of Eurocracy that will soon rule whatever the people say,
think or vote.Power is an end in and of
itself for princes.

The new struggle for Europe concerns where democracy happens. The EU elite unlike Comrade Vlad are not averse to democracy they simply want it to happen at the European level. The rest of us believe that 'democracy' at the European level will simply confirm power that is too far distant from the people. They very thing that in the end killed Rome.

Thursday, 24 April 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 24
April.When asked by a journalist back in
the 1960s what worried him most patrician British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan
allegedly replied, “Events, my dear boy, events”.President Obama has clearly been taken aback
by Russia’s use of force and insurrection in Ukraine.Obama’s opponents like to cast the President
as a foreign policy naïve who does not really understand nor feel comfortable
with the idea of American power.And yet
as President Obama begins a four-nation Asia-Pacific tour in Japan far from
lacking grand ambition the ideal of creating a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
built on open trade could be said to be the beginning of a truly grand strategic
Obama Doctrine.

The problem is that the
Obama Doctrine is more appearance than stated ambition which is the hallmark of
this Administration.It would appear to emphasise
trade power rather than hard, military power and it would appear to be built on
two potentially grand free-trade deals with democracies.The apparent aim is to help America regain grand
strategic pre-eminence via the twelve-state Asia-Pacific-focussed TPP and the
thirty-plus state Euro-Atlantic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP).

The Doctrine also makes
some apparent sense. Taken together a TPP/TTIP nexus would represent some 75%
of world trade. The message to America’s strategic competitors China and Russia
is clear (apparently); continue to rig the trading relationship in your favour
and/or use force to resolve territorial disputes and you will be excluded from
the partnerships at your cost.

In a sense the Obama
Administration is trying to replace the Wild West lawlessness of globalisation which
Washington believes permits Beijing and Moscow to flout conventions of state behaviour
with an American-centred regime of rules. This is particularly important given that the
UN and other world institutions are now paralysed by a Cold War-style grand
strategic power lock.If the appearance
is correct then the Doctrine is the grandest of grand strategies and if
successful would wrest back America’s fading leadership of the world.

However, appearances
can be deceptive.The strength of the
Obama Doctrine is that America remains for the time-being the world’s biggest
economy and leading trading power.As
such Washington can continue to try to condition the behaviour of others through
the use of strategic economic levers.Its weakness is that 2014 is not 1945 and US leadership of the West no
longer enjoys the automaticity it once did.The great financial and economic architectures America established post-1945
to confirm its political primacy such as the Bretton Woods Agreement have
become weakened by America’s huge debt burden, the hitherto strategic parochialism
of the Administration and the rise of the power challengers.

Furthermore, American
leadership is being challenged from within.The US Congress is notoriously short-termist and parochial with even
Democrats unlikely to be comfortable with free-trade deals that would appear to
take jobs away from their districts.Indeed,
the only people more parochial are the many Asian and European politicians notoriously
schizophrenic in their dealings with the US.They demand the US taxpayer by and large pays for their defence, insist
on their right to tell the Americans what to do and where, and ‘protect’
themselves from American trade when it suits.As a result both the TPP and TTIP could well fail as short-term, regional
tactical bickering and protectionism overcomes long-term American strategic
ambition.

However, it is precisely
the apparent long-term strategic ambition of the Obama Doctrine where both the
TPP and TTIP could have their greatest impact.Implicit in both is an American attempt to rebrand the ‘West’ as a
global idea built on democracy and trade. As such both partnerships (note they are not
formal treaties) could provide the economic underpinnings of a new world-wide
security web (WWsW) specifically but implicitly designed to constrain and
contain dangerous revisionist powers such as China and Russia.

In that light America’s
emphasis on Asia-Pacific is less a pivot and more the rebalancing of twenty-first
century American grand strategy away from Europe and and a hitherto exclusive
post-911 struggle with Islamism. As an aside Tony Blair’s rather strange intervention
in London that the world’s great powers put aside their differences and refocus
exclusively on Islamism as a threat was special pleading by yesterday’s man
about yesterday’s big issue yesterday.Of
course Islamism remains a threat but it must take now its place in the Pantheon
of grand threats America and its allies must grand strategically consider.

However, what makes President
Obama’s Asia-Pacific tour truly grand strategic is the implicit re-positioning
of American grand strategy firmly on the Continental United States and the
American interest.Asian, Australasian
and European allies and partners need to understand that.

Of course, it would be
nice to think President Obama understands the Obama Doctrine.Too often he presents American strategy more
as theory than practice.This makes the
Obama Administration not only appear unsure of strategic grip but particularly
vulnerable to Harold MacMillan’s “events”.

Tuesday, 22 April 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 22
April.Joe Biden’s visit to Kiev and the
failure of last week’s Geneva Accord should finally force Europeans to face reality;
Russia is a competitor not partner.

A few years ago in
Garmisch-Partenkirschen I sat opposite the Russian Deputy Defence Minister at a
NATO-sponsored dinner.It was one of those
classic moments when two Great Powers met face to face – Russia and
Yorkshire.As she was a woman who
clearly did not mince her words neither did I.“Is Russia part of European security or a problem for it?” The Minister
smiled as she understood my meaning. “Russia will always have
its own interests”, she replied frostily.

The greatest shock of
the Ukraine crisis to Europe’s High Priests of Soft Power is not per se the unexpected instability in
Europe’s east but Russian inability to 'get' Europe.The fact that after all these years Russia has not accepted the primacy
of the EU’s liberal-eurocracy as the defining feature of ‘power’ in
contemporary Europe.

American mathematician
John Nash pioneered the so-called Nash Equilibrium whereby competitive actors
achieve stability only when no actor can gain by changing a system of
relationships.Moscow has today perceived
the opportunity for gain through aggression because Europeans have failed to
invest in key elements of Europe’s security and thus lack both the intent and
capability to preserve the system in stasis.

For too long Brussels
and other European capitals (not to mention Obama’s Washington) refused to
understand that Moscow sees the relationship with the West as essentially and
inherently competitive.Indeed, for
Russia all crises reflect nodal points of decisive competition at two levels –
low politics (between peoples) and high politics (between states) – both of
which are to be exploited in the Russian interest.

In the ‘low’ politics of
Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine the desperate struggles of
desperate people in desperate societies are to Moscow domains for high
political competition not merely humanitarian tragedies.In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War
when Russia was reeling at the sudden loss of empire and prestige the West
decided that geopolitical competition was at an end.Henceforth the future strategic creed would
simply concern the steady spread of Western liberal values via globalisation
and humanitarianism.Revisionists were
simply those states that either could not nor would not see this ‘reality’ and
in time would be forced to recant by their own peoples.

However, high politics
was not and never will be at an end. President Putin repeatedly told the West that
he was a student of history and saw Russia’s future not in terms of the values
espoused by European liberal-eurocrats but by a concept of the Russian national
interest that was deliberately differentiated.At the Munich Security Conference he laid out his vision of Russian
Great Power.He was politely listened to
in that appallingly condescending way the Eurocracy deals with all
dissent.The result is Europe’s new disequilibrium.

Historians will see the
European complacency and self-indulgence of the nineties and ‘naughties’ as one
of those great self-delusions that Europeans are all too wont to suffer.President Putin calmly went about exploiting
the seemingly bottomless well of empty rhetoric that steadily hollowed-out
Europe’s security and defence.Moscow’s method
was to keep Europe off-balance by telling European leaders by and large what
they wanted to hear, by exploiting the European appetite for ‘cheap’ energy and
then quietly doing the very thing European did not want to see.

Russia’s true
intentions are now clear; Greater Russia.Greater Russia does not necessarily mean a new Cold War but it does mean
that Russia will never buy into ‘Europe’.Putin today sees the world today very much in the light of Mackinder
with cores of power and their peripheries. His power map of the world is and always has
been Russia not Europe-centric with Russia the core and Europe Russia’s
periphery.Energy and military power are
simply his dynamic agents of change.

President Putin finds
nauseating in the extreme the whole concept of European soft power and the idea
that stability is a power end in and of itself and therefore that power is in
fact weakness.He utterly rejects the
idea that power and influence lies in a world more like the EU than
Russia.Ultimately, for President Putin
power and prestige are founded on the military men and machinery that every May
again march through Red Square and the energy that lies beneath his feet.

For the Russian
president weakness legitimises Russian intervention for it creates the very lines
of advance for pursuit of the Russian interest and with it the creation of a
new ‘equilibrium’ built on European dependence on Russia.

Europeans have
forgotten the first rule of grand political Realism; don’t get fooled by
illusions you have yourself created.Nineteenth century Russian Prime Minister Gorschakov once described
Europe as a peninsula stuck on the end of Russia.That is President Putin’s twenty-first
century aim.

The Americans seem to
understand this but Washington’s ‘understanding’ is not without tragic irony. Moscow understands that the EU is less than
the sum of its parts.In the midst of
the crisis the Obama Administration is driving Europe’s powers to abandon their
individual foreign policies to create a new EU ‘power’.The American obsession with a ‘united’ Europe
not only complicates the crisis it undermines NATO and turns Europeans into a non-power;
easy for Washington to control but incapable of exerting credible influence.

The cruncher is this;
for the High Priests of European Soft Power to see credibility restored unto
their creed they must invest in the military tools of hard power that President
Putin has helped restore as a reserve currency of power. They must also wean Europe off
Russian energy.

As John Nash said; in
competitive relationships there is always a loser.

Thursday, 17 April 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 17
April.Have I missed something?When did Britain or indeed any EU
member-state formally hand-over its foreign and security policy to Brussels?Today a meeting will take place in Geneva at
which the American, Russian, Ukrainian and EU foreign ministers will sit down
to discuss the current crisis.As far as
I can see this is a first and establishes a dangerous precedent for the conduct
of the foreign policy of Europeans by the EU.Indeed, it is precisely the kind of functional precedent European
federalists use to prosecute creeping federalism.It must stop as it is neither effective nor
efficient and certainly not legitimate.

In AD 46 at the end of
the Roman Civil War Cato the Younger warned that “Necessity is the argument of
tyrants, it is the creed of slaves”.He
was speaking as he was about to commit suicide having watched Pompey and Caesar
destroy the Roman Republic in the name of Rome.Don’t worry as I am not going to fall on my sword even though Sheffield
United did lose 5-2 to Hull in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley last
Saturday.

Cato’s words were
prophetic as Rome moved to greatness under the emperors but only at the expense
of liberty.The headlong rush to give
ever more power to Brussels in the name of necessity is a similar such
political sleight of hand.The strange
thing is that national leaders allow this to happen behind the backs of their
people.I can fully understand why officials
in London’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office want to do this.The FCO as an institution has lost all faith
in Britain and its leaders and believe to a man and woman that Little Britain
can only survive in the comforting bureaucratic embrace of an ‘over-mighty’
EU.

When William Hague, my
fellow Yorkshireman, became Foreign Secretary I thought “na then, him at’t
Foreign Office will give them southern diplomatic plonkers some reet Yorkshire
nous” (Translation; Mr Hague will ensure Foreign Office Mandarins protect the
British national interest).I could not
have been more wrong (it happens once every five centuries or so).Hague has gone completely native by allowing
his Mandarins to convince him that it is in the British interest to hand over
foreign and security policy to the EU in the midst of a crisis for it marks the
beginning of the end of a distinctive British foreign and security policy.

Some of you will no
doubt be accusing me at this point of falling into the grip of those who equate
the EU with the dark arts.Not a bit of
it.I am more than willing to see the EU
in the room with the big three.That is
precisely what happened in the E3/EU+3 talks with Iran last year.The EU joined Britain, France and Germany in
the room with the US, China and Russia.

So, can the EU move to
greatness?Indeed, if an EU foreign
policy could ensure European effectiveness then at least a case could be made
for a European foreign policy even if it fails to meet my standards for
representative democracy and legitimacy.However, an EU foreign policy is anything but effective.Baroness Ashton (bless her soon to be
departed Lancastrian heart) far from representing the collected and collective will
of the EU and its peoples (i.e. me) will in fact say very little that would
convince Moscow of Europe’s collective will.At the same time she is by extension neutering the only voices in Europe
to which Moscow might listen because of their vestigial Realpolitik power –
Britain, France and Germany.

EU foreign policy
paradoxically is about the representation of the weak at the expense of the
strong.Indeed, an EU foreign and
security policy is less not more than the sum of its parts as it reflects
neither power nor policy. Ashton will
therefore sit in the Geneva room (I know which one) with twenty-eight hopelessly
split EU member-states sitting on her shoulders plus the European Parliament
and the European Commission (the EU’s twenty-ninth and thirtieth states respectively).She will say precisely nothing of substance.

What is more important
is that her sole presence marks the beginning of the end of the Republic as
represented by the nation-states and the creation of a form of horribly inefficient
and ineffective empire which will make me less safe, less secure, less free
with less of a voice.Like Sulla,
Pompey, Caesar and Augustus before her she claims (not personally) ever more
power unto the EU in the name of the very Republic she is destroying.

Therefore, handing European conduct
of the Ukraine crisis to the EU is a dangerous oxymoron.Indeed, an EU foreign and security policy can neither be effective nor
efficient let alone legitimate because it does not reflect the very thing vital
to crisis management - reality.

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

Russia
aims to re-establish itself as an alternative power pole to the EU in Europe.However, Russia is a dangerous cocktail of
power and weakness, allied to a strong sense of historic grievance and
entitlement.Indeed, Russia is an
oligarchy and in danger of becoming like Saudi Arabia or Iran; led by a small
rich elite, difficult to predict, with immense political and social problems,
and, at best, an irritant, rather than a serious systemic strategic player,
albeit nuclear-armed.The re-emergence
of Russian prickliness has gone hand in hand with the need for Russia’s
abundant natural resources by much of Europe.President Putin has skilfully manipulated oil and gas revenues to boost
Russia’s prestige both at home and abroad, even though price volatility has
sobered Kremlin planners.In fact,
Russian energy masks an uncomfortable reality for Moscow; Russia is a declining
power with a declining population that must be governed over six time
zones.

Britain
has been the target on several occasions of Russia’s need to flex its strategic
muscles, most spectacularly (and allegedly) with the November 2006 London
murder of Russian émigré Alexander Litvinenko, allegedly by an individual close
to the Kremlin.The focus on Britain by
the Kremlin is paradoxically flattering and concerning.Like their Iranian counterparts, many of the
so-called Siloviki (state security apparatchiks) around Putin tend to regard
the British as the sophisticated architects of a Western anti-Russian strategy.

Furthermore,
by targeting Britain, Moscow can send a message to Washington that is not
directly injurious to American interests.Russian assertiveness is unlikely to change, so long as President Putin
is in power and representative democracy remains weak.Indeed, the Kremlin will continue to have a love-hate
relationship with Western powers, dependent on the rest of Europe economically,
but occasionally resorting to traditional anti-Western reflexes to mask the
inherent instability and weakness of the Russian state from the Russian
people.The modernisation of Russia’s
armed forces will also promote the seductive idea amongst Russians that Moscow
can re-establish a sphere of influence over Russia’s ‘near abroad’,
particularly in central Asia, the southern Caucasus and possibly even Eastern
Europe, as evinced by the 2008 invasion of Georgia.

For
all that, Russia does not pose a threat to Britain.Moscow has legitimate strategic and regional
concerns of which Britain must be cognisant.Indeed, as one of three European outlier powers, Britain may share a
convergence of interest with both Russia and Turkey if the EU integrates away
from Britain.Britain needs to work
constructively with Russia on the successor treaty for the Conventional Forces
Europe (CFE) treaty. However, Britain must never accept that
Russia has ‘special rights’ in Europe or that Moscow could re-establish an
extended sphere of influence over allies and partners.Sovereign choice by all states in the
Euro-Atlantic security space is a fundamental principle underpinning both NATO
and the EU which Britain must firmly uphold.

Therefore,
whilst Britain must be sensitive to Russian concerns over future enlargements
of both NATO and the EU, border disputes in its region, missile defence and the
modernisation of NATO’s strategic defence architecture, Moscow can have no
veto.Rather, Britain must emphasize
that none of the West’s efforts to enhance security in Europe are aimed at
Russia per se.And, Russia could still become a vital
security partner in the fight against dangerous instability, in all its forms,
if a new political accommodation can be established between Russia and the
West.Britain should seek to corral
North Americans, Europeans and Russians to transform the relationship with
Russia into one of constructive engagement, built on mutual respect for
international law, respect for sovereignty and the mutual pursuit of strategic
financial and security stability.

To
that end, Britain and its allies must also confront the many
inner-contradictions in their collective approach to Russia. Americans and Europeans (and Europeans and Europeans)
have different views of, and approaches to dealing with, Russia.There must be a strong common stance on
Russian attempts to undermine NATO (which need no encouragement to undermine
itself).Whilst Russian proposals to
strengthen the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) are
to be welcomed, the 2010 Russian proposal for a New Security Treaty threatened
to undermine NATO.Any attempt to marginalise NATO, or to
interfere in the sovereign rights of states on Russia’s borders, will and must
be resisted firmly by Britain.

Britain
and the West must also avoid strategic irresponsibility.NATO cannot credibly extend an Article 5
collective defence commitment to potential candidates such as Georgia. Indeed, it would be extremely dangerous
(indeed irresponsible) to extend a security commitment until an assessment has
been made of how the Alliance would carry out such a commitment.In any case, there is no internal consensus
within NATO about future enlargements.Britain should, therefore, promote caution and encourage NATO members to
better manage expectations about enlargement, both within and without the
Alliance and frankly be more honest about the level of commitment on offer from
the Alliance.

Britain
must also endeavour to help European nations develop a coherent, coordinated
strategy toward Russia.To that end,
British strategy should underscore the close and friendly relations Britain
desires with Russia, but that these relations must be based on respect for international
law and the UN Charter, as well as respect for the sovereignty and independence
of its neighbours, especially those in the former Soviet space.

In
formulating its strategy, Britain should be sensitive to the fact that Russia
has long-standing political, economic and security interests in this region. However, the defining principle of British
policy must be that all legitimate states have a right to decide their own
political and security orientation, including membership in NATO and the EU (if
they so wish) and should they meet the qualifications for membership.

Monday, 14 April 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 14
April. When I was speaking the other day to a
senior European Council official he referred to “the enemy across
Brussels”.“NATO?” I enquired.“No, the European Commission”, came the
reply.As EU foreign ministers meet to
discuss the worsening crisis in Ukraine’s eastern regions and with FSB agents
continuing unrelenting Russian efforts to destabilise Ukraine Europe is effectively paralysed by division.By exploiting
Europe’s many seams Moscow is successfully keeping Europe politically off
balance in the midst of crisis.Europe’s
cacophony of irresolution and incoherency is testimony to Russia’s
success.Can Europeans ever find
strategic unity of effort and purpose?

This weekend former
Luxembourg Prime Minister, EU federalist, uber-insider and possibly the next
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called for the creation of a
European Army.On the face of it and
given Russian aggression such a suggestion would appear to make sense.Europeans clearly need to spend more on security
and defence. Juncker’s argument is that in the midst of the on-going Eurozone
crisis the most ‘efficient’ way to afford such a force would be via the EU’s
Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).It is a political trap.

CSDP has its place in
Europe’s range of tools because the flag one places on an operation in complex
environments is as important as the force or the effort one deploys.However, to seek to exploit the crisis as
part of Europe’s interminable battle over EU governance is irresponsible in the
extreme.It is vital that Europe’s
states take concerted action rather than get lost in the federalist fantasies
of M. Juncker.

The problem is that Europe’s
most dangerous seam runs right through the EU between ‘common’ structures such
as CSDP and collective structures (like NATO) in which the nation-states lead.Typically, M. Juncker is using the crisis
to make the case for a real CSDP not so much to deter Russia as to transfer responsibility
for national defence to the EU and thus further erode the 'core competence' of the European
nation-state.It is a classic federalist
‘functionalist’ manoeuvre which not only enjoys no political legitimacy whatsoever but
is downright dangerous at this dangerous moment.

Sadly, the EU's great
political seam has created a strategic no man’s land between the unelected European
Commission and the barely-elected European Parliament on the one side, and the
European Council and the most powerful member-states on the other.Strategically ‘Europe’ is paralysed by a political
stalemate between the two camps that is doing immeasurable damage to Europe’s
ability to influence events around it.Moscow fully understands this.

To break the stalemate in
their favour the federalists in the Commission and the European Parliament want
more EU not less. To get there they have
resorted to covert (and not so covert) back door political integration.This involves the maximum possible
interpretation of the Treaty on European Union and political gambits
masquerading as technical fixes under the rubric of “harmonisation”.

Next week a classic
piece of “harmonisation” will take place concerning car number plates across
the EU.On the face of it the proposal seems
innocuous.The Commission recently moved
to make it simpler for EU nationals to register their vehicles in another
member-state.The aim they claim is to
prevent fraud and waste.However, the
Commission’s friends in the European Parliament proposed an amendment that
would see national designs for car number plates scrapped and replaced with a
single EU template.The political aim is to create
in the mind of the citizen the belief that political momentum towards a federal
European state is inexorable, unstoppable and inevitable and that resistance is
futile.

Last week a British
diplomat Iain Mansfield won €100,000 for proposing the most compelling case for
a Brexit – a British withdrawal from the EU.He will need the money as his career is now toast in the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office which is packed full of EU loyalists.His central point is that a British exit from
the EU would release Britain from the appalling cost of EU regulation.Mr Mansfield misses the point; EU regulation
is deliberately excessive because through such regulation the Commission and Parliament
(the EU’s twenty-ninth ‘state’) can enforce harmonisation and by extension integration.

For European action to
be both effective and legitimate in the face of Russia’s challenge Europe’s states
must be clearly in the lead.Therefore, it
is time the European Council and the states move to put M. Juncker in his place
by decisively taking control over foreign and security policy back so that they
can respond collectively to the crisis.If
some states choose to demur or stand aside then so be it.The alternative is paralysis.

A truly common CSDP may
one day become reality but not for many years to come.However, as long as the European Commission, European
Parliament and the likes of Jean-Claude Juncker use such crisis in an
existential struggle with the European Council and the states represented
therein Europe will be fatally weakened. Moreover, Moscow will continue to exploit the
political trench warfare taking place at the heart of the EU and the uncertain
and weak Europe it has created.

European strategic unity of effort and purpose right now means more state action and less not more EU.It is time for Europe’s states to lead and
act together.

Friday, 11 April 2014

Rome, Italy. 11 April.
Winston Churchill once said, “There is nothing wrong with change, as long as it
is in the right direction”. Before coming here to Rome I was in Paris with
senior NATO political and military leaders to consider the transformation of the
Alliance’s military forces.I say the
transformation of NATO forces but as with all such discussions the real
questions were political rather than military.In spite of being French my dear friend and colleague Professor Dr Yves
Boyer made a good point; there can be no military transformation without
political adaptation.Indeed, given
events elsewhere the large elephant in the elegant room was whether and how
fast NATO’s European allies could re-learn the fundamental strategic principles
they once gave the world of classical political realism - the new normal of
power.

Classical political
realism is hard stuff.It is neither
good nor bad – it simply is. It concerns the understanding, generation and application
of power itself established on the hard tools of analysis and the sober
application of strategic judgement.The
West’s response to the Ukrainian crisis is the antithesis of political realism
with NATO Allies swinging between emotive over-reaction and narrow
self-interested under-reaction.

Russia’s unilateral use
of force to change borders and its continued use of force to intimidate Kiev and
the wider region is not a constructive contribution to European peace and
stability.However, like it or not it is
an effective application of classical political realism, a brilliant use of
power and influence in the short-term, even if it makes little strategic sense
in the medium to long-term.Europeans may
not like that but it is fact.

Before true military
transformation can take place the Alliance and its members must first
re-establish hard analysis of capability and intent that would enable the
Allies together to look beyond the politics of the moment and out to the
structure of strategy.Only then will
NATO Europeans begin to face up to what is fast becoming the new normal of
twenty-first century power politics.

As the debate in Paris
unfolded US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and his Chinese counterpart Chiang
Wiangqian were exchanging their own bit of classical political realism in a
very testy exchange in Beijing. What Hagel
was witnessing was China’s new normal; a growing power beginning to flex its power
muscles and in so doing openly objecting to America’s presence in what Beijing
clearly thinks is Mare Nostrum. The point is that the Chinese are not alone in
such balance of power thinking.Ukraine
put forward a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly condemning
Russia’s action in Ukraine-Crimea as illegal.Almost half of the world’s states represented abstained.

Europeans need to
understand quickly two hard lessons of classical political realism.First, the West is in rapid decline and it is
a decline that is driven primarily by Europe’s retreat from such realism.The soft power fixation of Europeans is a
distinctly minority viewpoint not shared by the majority of emerging and
re-emerging powers the world over.To
expect such powers to behave by such standards is fast becoming dangerous political
hubris.Second, the only way to
effectively deter and counter the realist calculations of powers such as China
and Russia is to have sufficient military power to enable all other tools of
influence to be credible in the eyes of allies and adversaries alike.

Critically, NATO’s
attempts to inject momentum into its transformation agenda will fail unless
political leaders adapt rapidly to the ‘new’ realities of classical political
realism.Europeans in particular must
end the fantasy that they can achieve security and stability without military capability
and capacity.That will require
political leadership and the abandonment of the false lament that public
opinion would not understand it.Public
opinion is never consulted on anything else in Europe these days, particularly
when it concerns the EU.

In September the
British will host in Wales arguably the most important strategic summit NATO
has held since the end of the Cold War.Ideally the all-important political guidance would give Alliance leaders
the task of reconsidering NATO’s military role in the twenty-first
century.That will mean a sober and
purposeful analysis of the political and military implications of the rapid change
in the global balance of power that is taking place.As hosts the British have a key role to play
in establishing such a level of ambition.

Much talk is heard at
such gatherings of China and Russia being ‘revisionist’ powers.In fact, London and other European capitals
must realise fast that Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi and indeed Washington share
many views about the utility of power.And,
they are the new normal not Europe.

If nothing else the
2014 NATO Wales Summit must begin the search for a new and shared strategic
understanding within the Alliance.For
that Europeans must return to the principles of classical political realism
they have for too long abandoned.

NATO; there can be no
military transformation without political adaptation.

Sunday, 6 April 2014

Paris, France. 6
April. Speaking last week at the launch of the EU’s operation to the Central
African Republic Baroness Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and
Security Policy said, “The launch of
this operation demonstrates the EU’s determination to take full part in
international efforts to restore stability and security in Bangui and right
across the Central African Republic. It forms a key part of our comprehensive
approach to solving the huge challenges faced by the Central African Republic”.

The French-led EU mission takes place against the sad backdrop of the
Rwandan genocide.Twenty years ago today
a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President
Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down.In the
one hundred days between 7 April and 15 July, 1994 it is estimated that up to
one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered.It is something that must never be allowed to
happen again.

There are many who
might conclude that such atrocities are not Europe’s business.After all, contributing factors to such
conflicts are the arbitrary lines drawn by nineteenth century colonial overlords? Europeans had best stay out of Africa?Furthermore, with Russia’s annexation of Ukraine-Crimea the world has
entered a new era of Realpolitik?The West
the argument goes will therefore have to abandon humanitarian missions in
favour of a new great power stand-off?

No. Europeans and the wider West will need to
consider all such missions.However, to successfully
undertake conflict prevention and mitigation in such places will require a
radical re-organisation of the security and defence effort and a leap of
ambition amongst national leaders hitherto conspicuous by its absence.

It is precisely
because of the values the West claims to uphold that such engagements matter.Yes, the West is indeed engaged in a form of implicit
and not-so-implicit strategic competition with China and Russia.However, it is precisely because this
struggle must not be defined by those in either Beijing or Moscow who would
like to see a new global zero-sum that such engagements are vital.

Furthermore, today’s
conflict over the “rules of the road” means it is vital the West together seek a
new balance between values and interests - what I call in my latest book Little Britain? the value-interest.That does not mean doing more Afghanistans (although the turnout in this
weekend’s elections show some real progress has been made by engagement therein).
Rather, it requires recognition at the very highest levels that the upholding
of values and rules and their legitimisation through international institutions
is a critical Western interest.

Third, if the
West does not engage then there will be direct consequences for Europe in the
form of further mass migrations and terrorism. It is precisely such spaces that Al Qaeda and
their affiliates exploit, as is all too evident in northern Nigeria.

However, to
engage in such large spaces with huge numbers of people facing immense problems as Rwanda or the Central
African Republic demands of the West both modesty and ambition.Modesty in the sense that all that can be
reasonably achieved by Western forces and resources is stabilisation.Reconstruction and the rebuilding of
functioning political, social and economic institutions must come over time
from the international community writ large.In this case the UN and the African Union. The West, particularly Western militaries cannot substitute for them and it is vital both
institutions are strengthened.Thankfully, this is something China seems to agree with at least in
part.

However, the
West must also re-establish lost credibility if it is to become effective as an
enabler of both strategic and regional stabilisation. First, the NATO-EU relationship must be made firmer
and the implicit and silly competition between the two institutions ended.There will be times when because of the
political complexity of a mission it will make more sense for a force to be
under an EU and/or European flag.The political identity of a force is as important as the force itself because of the political identity it communicates. Europeans must not be afraid of a legitimate interest in Africa's well-being.

Those
in the EU who see such missions as the implicit and steady replacing of NATO by
the EU must be put firmly in their place.Neither the EU nor NATO alone will be sufficient to meet the challenges
of both strategic and regional stabilisation.

In my
presentation to NATO commanders in Naples late last week my final slide was
entitled NATO as a Strategic Hub.My
vision was for a NATO that acted as a force and influence generator. It is a NATO that would be able to generate
civilian and military power for crises both at the high and low ends of the
conflict spectrum.It would be an
Alliance that works closely with the EU to better organise the civilian and
military efforts of Allied and Union governments before, during and after crises.It would be an Alliance far better
able to reach out to partners such as states the world over, international organisations and
non-governmental organisations without compromising their independence.

This is the
perfect moment to realise such a vision.The Alliance has a wealth of lessons from operations in
Afghanistan.However, it is knowledge
that will erode rapidly if real steps are not taken to turn it into practice –
via education, exercising, training and outreach.

This week I will
attend a big NATO conference on the future of the Alliance in Paris.My idea will be clearly stated when I speak; the centre-piece of the
NATO Wales Summit in September must be the transformation of NATO into a twenty-first
century strategic hub.

F

or the
sake of humanity, for the sake of peace and for the sake of Rwanda.

Friday, 4 April 2014

Stuck at Naples Airport, 4 April. There is NO European Army! A couple of years ago I wrote that Britain should leave the EU. It was at the start of the Eurozone crisis and my concerns were twofold. First, to save the Euro, the EU's flagship integration project, Eurozone states would need to become far more politically and economically integrated. This process would automatically prejudice the position of the British and make the costs of EU membership for them far greater than the benefits. Second, having seen the self-serving and at times fanatical European elite at close quarters such integration would undoubtedly concentrate too much unaccountable political power in too few elite hands. Over time this would render the European citizen effectively powerless in the face of ever more distant power. In the EU as currently structured political integration thus represents a profound threat to democracy - a strange form of liberal dictatorship. Third, a new form of 'imperialism' would be established between creditor and debtor states giving Germany in particular exaggerated influence. It is no fault of Germany which is a model democracy but such an imbalance of power would impact adversely the still delicate power balance that the EU is meant to oversee.

At the same time I am absolutely committed to European states working closely together in a dangerous world and supporting each other. I also believe for all the many frictions it causes that free movement of peoples is on balance a good thing. It is free movement of criminals that concerns me.

Therefore, I have had some sympathy with those in the UK in particular arguing their case on the principle of political liberty and democracy. And, I have no doubt that my old, great country would do very well outside of the EU if it had to go. I have been horrified by the blatant propaganda at times of the pro-EU lobby and their scaremongering over jobs to be lost and their silly suggestion that one of the world's top ten powers would be reduced to Norway and Switzerland if Britain left the EU.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has been the worst proponent of such propaganda. The European Commission's point man in Britain who is blatantly angling for a fancy Commission job now that his British political career is close to its end has consistently refused to address the dangers to democracy from an over-bureaucratized Brussels. And he is a Liberal Democrat.

He has been supported ably by big business which simply wants to turn Britain into an offshore source of cheap labour. It is no coincidence that the suppression of wages in Britain and the expanding gap between wages and profits coincided precisely with the opening of the European labour market.

However, if I object to propaganda from the pro-EU lobby I have similar disdain for such tactics from the anti-EU lobby. Now, I am no supporter of UKIP. Their ideas on foreign and security policy are straightforward Little England nonsense. Of course Russia's annexation of Ukraine-Crimea matters! Listening to Nigel Farage on this matter in his televised debate with Nick Clegg one might have been listening to Neville Chamberlain a lifetime ago and his appeasing of Hitler.

In that vein I was horrified this morning watching Sky News to see a UKIP spokeswoman insisting that the EU was sending a 'European Army' to the Central African Republic. It is complete and utter twaddle. The forces being sent are European national forces under European command. There is a world of difference between that and a European Army. I should know - I wrote my doctorate on it!

As a Euro-Realist it was the worst kind of propaganda and if that is to be the future tactic of UKIP then Euro-sceptics should be careful for what they wish for.

Those of us who are reasoned critics of the EU must stand on the principle of liberty and the hard ground of proper analysis. The case for reform must be made on that basis and if reform is denied such analysis must thereafter provide the avenue for Britain's reasoned departure from an EU that no longer reflects Britain's ancient principles of liberty.

By resorting to such scare tactics UKIP have reduced themselves the same level as the very Establishment they oppose.

Naples, Italy. 4
April.Christine de Pizan in her 1412
masterpiece “The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry” wrote “What will the wise
prince…do when…he must undertake wars and fight battles? First of all, he will
consider how much strength he has or can obtain, how many men are available and
how much money.For unless he is well
supplied with these two basic elements, it is folly to wage war, for they are
necessary to have above all else, especially money”.

War is coming, big war.
Not here, not now but some time, some place this century it is coming.The rapid shift in the military balance of
power away from the democracies, arms races, climate change and the coming
dislocation of societies, the dangerous proliferation of dangerous
technologies, demographic pressures, competition for energy, food and water and
the hollowing out of states.All
the necessary ingredients for big war exist driven daily by the growing systemic frictions apparent in the world.

As I write this blog the
sun is making its lazy way across the Bay of Naples.The southern Italian sun is in no hurry and takes
its time to appreciate the better things in life.I contemplate a voluptuous glass of
Campania as the old castle of Naples sits to my immediate left on the Borgo
Marinello.To my far left broken
Vesuvius lies asleep the Ad 79 destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum but the
ancient musings of Tacitus.In the
distance just visible in the sun-fried haze lies the alluring outline of
Capri.It is a picture of Italian
tranquillity – la dolce vita? Or is it? What I am actually looking
at is the ancient remains of a super-volcano with Vesuvius but a pimple on the
face of super power.

Yesterday, I briefed NATO
commanders on the role of the Alliance post-Afghanistan.My message? If the Alliance and its leaders
do not face up to the enormity of change in the world and the pressures it is
creating NATO too could become a pimple on the face of super power. Russia’s seizure of Ukraine-Crimea is just a
harbinger of things to come in a world in which the West is declining rapidly.

Military power is of
course but one of the many tools the West will need to help manage the coming
ruptures. However, military power will remain a critical tool because for many states
military power remains the reserve currency of influence and the stuff of
prestige. And yet in modern day Europe military power is seen as neither
affordable nor useful, a hangover from somebody else’s age that has no place in
the new Europe.

The essential problem
is as ever political; a lack of vision, an inability or a refusal of Western
leaders and led alike to see the big picture that friction is painting and its possible
consequences.The Russian action in
Ukraine-Crimea is but one of the symptoms of an international system under ever
growing pressure – a Vesuvius that has begun to smoke and rumble. Russia took Crimea because it could.

NATO is the world’s big security, big defence
alliance, a credible deterrent against extreme behaviour by extremists and extreme
states in extremis.NATO is insurance. However, the Alliance desperately
needs a root and branch reassessment of its role in twenty-first century peace.
Only thereafter could a proper
assessment be made of what must be done; the balance to be struck between
civilian and military tools, the type of military forces that will be needed and
at what level. That will take political courage and strategic vision in our leaders that is not immediately apparent.

The Alliance must be transformed into a new strategic hub that sits at the very pivot of civilian and
military security and defence. Not just in and around Europe but a NATO that
also sets a global industry standard for true strategic partnership the world
over.However, for such a NATO to emerge
the most profound of mind-set changes is needed at the political and military levels.Indeed, the challenge now is not to do the
past better but to do the future properly.Strategy can no longer be sacrificed at the altar of expedient politics
– the West’s great curse.

Russia is not going to
invade the rest of Europe, although the jury is still out on eastern
Ukraine.However, what Russia has done
is to end the comforting fantasy that conflicts can always be solved by dialogue alone.Moscow has reminded Europe in particular that
it no longer defines what former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called
the “rule of the road”. This is not just about Europe. Sitting over the
far horizon China is watching.How the
West responds to this crisis will decide whether China becomes a stakeholder in
the current system or a revisionist power.That is what is at stake.

Something very nasty is happening and it will be coming to a place near you sometime. Like the doomed of Tacitus if we continue along the road of strategic pretence will we one day find ourselves with nowhere to run. We need a legitimately strong NATO to stop it!

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.